Phil
Patton, contributing editor to ESQUIRE, gives readers
an inside glimpse of the " secret world of Roswell and
Area 51"
in DREAMLAND. This is not to be dismissed as another
speculative fantasy about visitors from other planets.
Instead it is a look at several cults, communities and the
history of super secret spy plane development at a mysterious
government facility in New Mexico known by many names as
DreamLand.

Touching upon mythos and culture, Patton explores a unique
community of diverse characters obsessed with the long denied
military base that gave birth to the U2 and Stealth spy
planes.
War plane buffs, ham radio electronics fans, conspiracy
theorists , UFO believers, scientists and military
personnel interact in a strange metaphoric quest for
the truth.

There is Bob Lazar who claims that he "back
engineered" UFO propulsion systems for the government
at Dreamland. A character calling himself PsychoSpy
routinely breaks government parameters in an attempt to
photograph strange secrets within the ultra secure compound.

At one point PsychoSpy is apprehended by helicopter and
ground troops, his film is confiscated. He sues in court
claiming the film shows the helicopter flying below FAA
guidelines and thus is evidence of a crime. Meanwhile ham
radio hobbyists , called interceptors , monitor and record
endless hours of radio traffic in hopes of garnering
sensitive secrets.

One such interceptor, named Steve Douglas, caught on tape
transmissions from a sinking Soviet Submarine that was
subsequently rescued by US ships and leaked the story to the
Associated Press. While the government denied the story at
the time, the intercepted transmissions broke the case to
the public.
Another story involving the cover up of a fighter crash by
the Air Force, who blamed the crash on homosexual suicide,
was exposed by Douglass interceptions on tape.

Patton explores the history of spy plane development in
DREAMLAND. Recounting U2 pilot Frank Gary Powers' capture
by the Russians in 1960, he tells of a suicide device, a
silver dollar with an attached pin treated with poison.
Twice, the pin escaped discovery in body searches.
When the Soviets took his flight suit, though, he
warned them about the pin. they tested it on a dog.
The dog's tongue turned blue, and it collapsed on
it's side. Within ninety seconds it stopped breathing;
in three minutes it was dead. He found his
interrogators frequently incompetent.

In his final chapter of Dreamland, Patton ponders an obscure
poem of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe. "Poe is the
patron poet of Dreamland" he writes. "Thinking
about Poe's room (at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville) I believe I better understood where the
dark visions of the black (secret) world fit into the ideal
of American order.."